Digital + Social

So you’ve listened carefully online to what customers and others are saying about your brand. You’ve determined where they are congregating and what they are talking about. You’ve developed a social game plan and where it will get to work— Twitter, Facebook, blogs, microsites, YouTube—all of the above. Now it’s time to create an actionable, results oriented promotional content calendar by following these straightforward steps.

If you anticipate email being a part of your ongoing marketing, it is smart to have a plan dedicated to it. This will save you time, prevent you (or your associates) from being too reactive and will deliver a roadmap that will help you achieve your stated goals.

Want to get your email messages into your customers’ inboxes, and more importantly, read? Then let their personal preferences inform your email strategy and deliver content they can use.

Given the typical company’s resource constraints, marketers must use triggered and sequenced messages that utilize existing segmentation schemes. Welcome campaigns are one example of a sequenced campaign.

Casual apparel retailer has taken another step to re-engage customers, this time with an innovative adaptation of Web couponing that lets online shoppers negotiate for the price they’re willing to pay

A contest at a plant in Jackson, TN, that makes Aunt Jemima frozen waffles, pancakes and French toast, led to three employees starring in a video filmed at the plant and documenting how the products are made. The first video in the series of three was posted Feb. 17 on Facebook and had 33,000 views within 24 hours. Viewers could also download a $1 coupon. Andy Reichgut, a vice president of marketing for Pinnacle Foods, which manufacturer’s Aunt Jemima products, gives us the scoop on the program.

An eye-catching subject line helped 3-D Web conferencing firm Proton Media to drive people back to their site and blog.

Watershed moments can come in unusual places. In 2007, Clara Shih had one in a tiny noodle shop located on a nondescript Hong Kong side street when she overheard two old men talking about Facebook.

“It seemed like the wrong place, the wrong language, and the wrong demographic,” Shih, founder and CEO of Hearsay Corp., told an audience at a Direct Marketing Club luncheon. But as she listened she understood their interest in what was then a nascent social network which boasted barely 20 million members.

Facebook has grown a touch during the intervening four years, with current users topping a half-billion people. Its importance to marketers has similarly expanded: Shih cites a survey in which 72.5% of U.S. companies consider social media a top marketing priority.

Chief Marketer recently talked with Craig Fitzgerald, editorial director of Waltham, MA-based e-newsletter firm IMN, to get his thoughts on what types of content work best in B-to-B newsletters, best practices, and what to avoid if you want to keep your audience opted-in and reading.

How do you build a critical mass of followers in social media-those social-grid head counts that are a prerequisite for giving a social campaign viral lift? In the case of online cycle gear seller Motorcycle Superstore